


Put Your Hands Into the Fire

by Xanisis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, It just happened, bellamy is a guard, clarke is a witch, modern salem witch trials au, what?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2741840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xanisis/pseuds/Xanisis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy had laughed when he’d first heard. Witches, the stuff of fairytales. He’d grown up with practically no parents, just a dad that smelled like liquor and left as soon as he had the first chance and a mom who cried herself to sleep at night and looked at him with mascara stained eyes and saw his father’s face instead of his own and flinched when he came near. He’d raised himself and then Octavia when the need had arisen. He doesn’t believe in fairytales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One day the world just falls apart.

.

It starts with some girls on a late night news show, some channel that nobody ever watches. Bellamy thinks that’s kind of funny, because he’s generally the only one to watch these sort of programs, they’re always about forgotten murders and abductions, stories that barely get told.

No one takes them seriously at first, just another bunch of loonies in a line up of conspiracy theories and whack jobs, but soon they are on talk shows again and again. The same story.

Witches.

Bellamy had laughed when he’d first heard. Witches, the stuff of fairytales. He’d grown up with practically no parents, just a dad that smelled like liquor and left as soon as he had the first chance and a mom who cried herself to sleep at night and looked at him with mascara stained eyes and saw his father’s face instead of his own and flinched when he came near.

He’d raised himself and then Octavia when the need had arisen. He doesn’t believe in fairytales.

.

Bellamy doesn’t really think that anything will change with this stunning announcement. It’s not like the girls have proof, just some grainy cell phone videos. It doesn’t seem like anything, but soon people start disappearing.

Bellamy thinks he doesn’t know anyone who's a witch, can’t imagine that he does, but people are getting arrested left and right and soon he discovers that he does. Old classmates, the girl he had a crush on in eighth grade, their local Congressman--he sees the Congressman’s family on tv, the way that his daughter cries, she can’t be more than fourteen, but she punches one of the government guards when they try and take her dad and hits and kicks until they have to get two guys to restrain her and he doesn’t care anything about witches, but he kinda respects her--are all accused of having magic and are carted away. The witches come out of the woodwork and he’s not sure if all of them have magic or not, but people just keep disappearing. Scared people do crazy things, he thinks, and people are terrified.

.

One day a witch appears on live tv. All of the news channels broadcast the footage--it’s supposed to be a success story or a show of power or something, but really it’s just people staring in horrified fascination at her face. A live witch. She glares back at the audience with fierce kohl rimmed eyes. Government guards hold both of her arms back, but she barely seems to notice. She looks like the witches Bellamy would have imagined when he was little if he’d ever cared to imagine them, all braided hair and hollowed cheeks and snarling teeth.

She smiles and one of the guard’s head explodes, the blood splashing across the background, staining the white walls and all of the people around her. Bellamy covers Octavia’s eyes, because she’s fifteen, too young to see bits of brain matter scattered across the screen, but she shoves his hand off with an exasperated,  “Seriously, Bell?” 

The crowd goes wild, panic ensuing in the press room, but the camera remains on the witch’s face as the remaining guard drags her away. Her face is coated with blood, but she’s smiling, white teeth gleaming. He can hear her laughing through the pandemonium and he feels a shiver down his spine.

He doesn’t know when he started living in a nightmare. 

.

The world becomes a war zone.

The government steps up their patrols. They start recruiting anyone who wants to join. Bellamy is in his last year of school and he watches most of his friends either join the recruiting center or get taken away. Some of them stay in school, but the hallways are emptier now than they used to be. People are scared. He stops trusting anyone, relying on anyone. He goes home every weekend to look after Octavia. His mom is out all the time, she rarely comes home anymore and Octavia needs him. That’s what he tells himself when he shuts himself off from the rest of his classmates, stops smiling at girls anymore, stops caring for anyone but his family. It’s safer that way.

.

His phone wakes him in the middle of the night. He rolls over, feeling a jolt in his chest when he sees Octavia’s name on the caller id. 

“O?” he picks up.

“She hadn’t come home, Bell.”

She’s crying so hard he can barely make out the words, “It had been a week and she hadn’t come home, so I went looking for her.”

“What happened?” he asks her, “Octavia, what happened?"

“I found her body ,” she whispers and he feels his world realign.

.

The funeral is small, just him and Octavia, but that’s all they need anyway. Octavia clings to his hand and cries when they drop what’s left of their mother’s body into the pit. Bellamy feels his eyes tighten, but he doesn’t cry. He’s too mad to cry.

.

He drops out of school to move back home. Octavia protests, but he shushes her.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he says and eventually she stops fighting him.

He joins the guard as soon as he can. He wants to hit someone. He wants to kill someone. He wants to find the witch that killed his mother and he wants to destroy them. He may not have always been the best son, but he can do this.

.

He spends most of his time hunting witches, picks up extra shifts when he can. He tells himself it’s because they need the money--he’s the only one supporting them now, and Octavia graduates from high school in a year and she should really go to college-- but really he just can’t stand to be home. He can’t look Octavia in the eye anymore.

.

 

At first, it’s just a job. Something that he does. But then he starts getting a kick out of it. He starts liking it. He learns to know the witches better than they know themselves--he knows how they think, how they move, how they live. He knows them.

They don’t kill the witches, not officially. They find them and they turn them in. Nobody tells him what happens to the witches after that, but Bellamy has a pretty good idea. He doesn’t like to think about that part, but he remembers the way that Octavia had sounded on the phone, the cadence of her voice as she’d whispered “I found the body” and he doesn’t feel as bad anymore.

.

Octavia starts lining her eyes with dark liner, the blue and black a fierce contrast. She dates a solemn boy that’s too old for her. She doesn’t introduce them, but Bellamy sees him drop her off some nights, sees him hold her to him too tightly at the front door, like she’s precious, like she hangs the moon. Bellamy clenches his fists and misses his mother.

.

Octavia’s not home when Bellamy returns from his shift and when she does return, her makeup is smeared and the smell of smoke clings to her.

“What are you doing, O?” he asks her.

“None of your business,” she retorts, stumbling when she tries to walk down the hallway.

“Your business is my business,” he says.

He thinks that he sounds in control, but she just laughs.

“You’re not my father, Bellamy,” she coos.

Her eyes are out of focus and she doesn’t see the way that he flinches.

“I know that,” he says and it’s true.

She doesn’t remember their father, but he does. He’s not his father. He’s not. He remembers the way his mother had looked at him-- how she’d seen a different man in his eyes and how it had made her hate him, had made her fear him-- and he’s glad of that fact. He is.

“Then don’t try and act like you fucking are, okay? You’re never even home. I guess that makes you like dad in some ways then,” she’s breathing hard, pupils dilated.

And maybe she’s right in some ways, because he finds himself getting angry. He feels like he has all this energy building up inside of him and nothing can stop it, it's just an unending tide of fury. He can’t control it, but he has to. He has to. 

“I’m providing for you, while you’re off doing god knows what, I am providing for you. Do you see these bills on the table? I’m fucking taking care of it, okay? And I’d rather not worry about you while I’m out there risking my life to put food on the table.”

“I’m not a baby, Bellamy” she says all fierce pride, but she is. She doesn’t know it, but she is.

.

One day she she just doesn’t come back.

.

He waits and waits, but she’s nowhere to be seen. He goes to all of her usual haunts, interrogates the girls who used to be her friends, beats up her dealer, searches and searches, but he can’t find her. She’s his baby sister, and he can’t find her.

.

_You wouldn’t run, would you, Octavia? You wouldn’t run from me._

.

He knows the drill--they just disappear. No one knows where, not even him, they’re just gone and once they’re gone, there’s no coming back.

.

The day after she goes missing, he shows up to work and the door is locked. He tries his key card and the light shows up red. He swipes it again and again, frustration mounting, swiping and swiping, harder and harder, and the buzz always sounding no, no, no. He slams his fist against the door, but is only rewarding with a stinging pain in his right hand. If he needed any confirmation of where Octavia is, he has found it.

.

He hears whispers of a rebellion brewing. He keeps his ear to the ground all the while watching the money trickle down the drain until there’s nothing left. He gets a job working as a janitor at the college where he used to go to school. It’s humiliating, but he needs the money and he finds he has nothing left to lose.

.

He sees a girl watching him in the hallways of the school, all pale skin and furrowed brow. There’s something familiar about her features, but it takes him awhile to place why. Then he realizes that she’s the Congressman’s daughter, the one that had fought the guards, the one he had thought was brave. But she’s not a gangly fourteen year old anymore. She sure as hell is not.

He rewatches the clip of her dad being arrested, it’s been four years since he’s seen it, but he’s still struck by the terror in her eyes, the protectiveness in every line in her body, the fierceness in her movements. _Clarke Griffin_ , he thinks, _Who are you Clarke Griffin?_  

.

“See something you like, Princess?” he asks her one day when she’s watching him and he sees a blush spread across her cheeks. It’s adorable as hell.

“Are you Bellamy?” she asks.

He starts.

“How do you know my name?” 

She looks around the hall with worried eyes and presses a piece of paper into his hand.

“I’ll explain everything,” she whispers, “but not here, okay?” 

He unfurls the paper when she’s gone, sees an address and a time scrawled in messy green script on the crumpled page. He tells himself that he’s not going to go, but at the appointed time, he finds himself showing up. What has he got to lose anyway? Everything, a voice whispers, but he ignores it. 

.

The address is an abandoned warehouse. He thinks that’s sort of cliched, but whatever. If it’s effective, whatever, though he senses that it’s not. He knows that this is the first place the guard would go looking for some kind of underground activity, better to hide in plain sight, where less people are looking. It’s only when he realizes that he’s plotting strategy that he discovers that maybe he’s thinking about helping.

.

The group gathered at the warehouse is a collection of teenagers-- some are ragged, dirt covering their skins, clothes worn and tired, and others, like Clarke, look put together.

“You,” he says, catching sight of Octavia’s boyfriend and stalking over to him and wrapping his hand around his throat.

He hasn’t seen him for months. Months and months and Octavia is still missing, but this boy, he’s still right here. He’s right as rain, while Bellamy’s baby sister is god knows where having god knows what being done to her. He doesn’t move, just stares at Bellamy with level eyes and doesn’t lift a hand to defend himself, doesn’t even try to say anything. It infuriates Bellamy.

He feels a hand on his arm, pulling him back, and he looks over with angry eyes and sees Clarke.

“Stop it,” she hisses and he sees something of the girl that would attack four armed guards rather than let them take her father away.

He drops his hand, steps back from the boy, tries to distance himself from his anger.

“Lincoln was the one that suggested we call you in,” she says, “he said that you used to be a guard and that you would help us.”

The boy just shrugs. Bellamy can see bruises in the shape of his fingers forming around his throat.

“Help you what?” he asks.

“Help us survive, help us win,” she says and there’s something about the sincerity in her face, a sort of idealistic earnestness, that is obnoxiously appealing.

“And why would I do that?” he asks.

“Because,” she says and it’s like she knows exactly what buttons to press, “we’ll help you get your sister back.”

He doesn’t want to allow himself to hope, but as he looks into Clarke’s face, her eyes that intreat him to be the kind of person that could be a savior, he starts to. Maybe just a little bit.

.

For a resistance it’s not as much as he had hoped. Everyone there besides him is younger than eighteen and they’re all frightened. Most of them have lost people to the witch hunts, most of them are scared. Clarke won’t tell him whether any of them actually are witches or if they’re just stowaways, cast offs, those left behind.

“Would it matter?” she asks, avoiding his eyes.

“Damn right it would. I’d like to know who i’m dealing with.”

She purses her lips, but doesn’t reply.

“Still don’t trust me, Princess?”

“Should I?” she counters.

He wants to say yes, but it’s been awhile since anyone had faith in him.

.

In the end, he resorts to guessing. He supposes that at least some of the inner circle are witches. There’s a kid who wears glasses and is always conferencing with Clarke over scrawled bits of paper, words and drawings spread out between them like no kind of maps he’s ever seen that, that he thinks is a likely candidate. Lincoln, he reckons is probably a witch. Bellamy’s always thought he seemed kind of threatening--it’s partially the scowl and partially the muscles, but there’s something more there, something that says back off, something that screams unnatural. He thinks at first that he doesn’t really know what Octavia saw in him, but sometimes he sees him bringing food to some of the younger of the hundred, face gruff, but hands kind, and he catches a glimpse.

.

He gives Clarke a ride home after one of the meetings, dropping her back at the dorms.

“How’d you get involved in this rebellion anyway?” he asks her.

“What do you mean?” she asks, and he’s not looking at her, but he can almost see the expression on her face, eyebrows turned down, eyes questioning. He doesn’t know when he got to know her well enough that he could picture her face.

“I mean, you’re just a kid.”

He can feel her bristle.

“I’m eighteen,” she says.

He laughs. He remembers himself at eighteen, his first year in school, the year that the video had come out. It seems like several lifetimes ago.

“To answer your question,” she says stiffly, “It was my mother’s idea. She’s heading a bigger rebellion, but communication is hard, we never know who is listening and it’s important for someone to look out for these kids. They need something to hang onto.”

They’ve arrived at the dorm. Bellamy parks the car and turns to look at her. She’s looking out the window and even though he had just called her a kid, he thinks she looks a lot older than that. Older than most people he knows.

“That’s an awfully lot to take on for yourself, princess,” he says, the nickname slipping of his tongue with more affection than he intends.

She turns towards him and when they’re eyes meet it feels like something that Bellamy hasn’t felt since Octavia went missing, maybe before that.

“Somebody’s got to do it,” she says, and he knows that she believes that. Sometimes he’s still shocked about how much of a good person she is. She doesn’t seem real.

“And you think we can trust them? The witches, I mean.”

Something in her eyes tightens. He’s not sure what he said wrong, but he feels the moment closing.

“They’re just people, Bellamy,” she says, and opens the door and gets out of the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” she says, closing the door and leaving without looking back.

.

One night one of the boys brings out some homemade moonshine and the kids drink more than they probably should. Bellamy swigs from a bottle, but mainly just watches the mayhem. He sees Clarke standing to the side and goes to stand beside her. She’s not drinking, just watching the rest of them with a soft smile. 

“Too good to have any fun, ehh princess?” he asks.

“No,” she retorts, taking the bottle from his hand and taking a swig and then almost blanching. “That’s disgusting.”

“It is at that,” he says, “and it’s mine.”

He tries to take the bottle from her, but she brings it to her mouth again, lips curving into a smile around the bottle and he’s probably not supposed to be looking for a variety of reasons, but he is.

.

He starts to train them into a fighting force. They don’t know much, but they’re willing to learn. Clarke gets them guns, he doesn’t ask how, he thinks he probably wouldn’t want to know, and he teaches them how to shoot

He thinks that Clarke doesn’t really like him knowing something that she doesn’t, so she works extra hard, trying to act tough for everyone else.

“Here,” he says, stepping behind her and adjusting her stance, lifting her elbow and turning her hips.

Her back moves with her intake of breath and he can feel it against his chest. He should step back, should give her space, but instead he gives them a moment of shared air and when she hits the target and offers him a brilliant smile, he lets himself smile back.

.

“So, when’s the attack coming, princess?” he asks at one of their meetings.

He’s leaning back in the chair, feet propped against the table. Clarke looks up, her eyes flicking down to his feet and then back to his face.

“Off,” she says, pointing.

He raises his eyebrows.

“These are important documents, Bellamy,” she huffs, “Feet off.”

He complies with a smile. He was only doing it to get her riled in the first place.

“Attack plans?” he prompts.

“We’re working on it, but there’s a lot of guesswork involved. And our forces are,” she pauses, “limited at best. We can’t afford to lose men.”

“I signed on thinking that we were rescuing my sister. So far, we’ve done nothing. What are we waiting for?”

“We’ve all lost people,” she hisses and for a moment he thinks back to the crying fourteen-year-old she’d been, “I’m trying to make sure we don’t lose any more.”

“The clock’s ticking, princess,” he says.

.

In the end, the attack is kind of impromptu. The information comes in fast and there’s a narrow time frame and before they know it, they’re moving out. They’re sitting in the back of the truck, everyone piled in and crushed together, when Bellamy suddenly notices how young everyone is. They’re all scared, holding guns in their laps, clutching the ends like if they let go they’re going to die. Bellamy hopes he isn’t sending them off to their deaths. He hopes that Octavia is there. He meets Lincoln’s eye across bed of the truck and he sees his thoughts reflected in the other man’s eyes. Please be alright. Please be alright. Please be alright.

 


	2. Chapter 2

They enter the compound and everything is dark. They’re outnumbered almost as soon as they open the door, surrounded on all sides by guards. Bellamy starts shooting and he watches people fall to the ground, dead. There’s no time to stop and think about the consequences, to think about the people who he’s shooting, how they could have families, people waiting for them, how they could have been him, if circumstances had been different, he just shoots. There are more of them than they had anticipated in the planning room, where they had talked about things calmly and like they could succeed. In this moment, he doesn’t feel like they’re going to succeed. 

He’s thinking about last wishes and Octavia, when suddenly there’s a bright flash of light Bellamy has to cover his eyes, it’s so bright and he looks around and there’s Clarke right in the middle of it, shining like some kind of angel, but that’s not what she is. 

That’s not what she is at all.

.

The guards drop like flies, all of them falling to the floor. Bellamy doesn’t have time to think about if they’re dead or not, doesn’t have time to do anything but grab Clarke’s arm and start running. He hears footsteps behind them, echoing down the hallways, and he doesn’t know if it’s their people or the government’s. They’re running down hallway after hallway, each one looking the same as the last, and Bellamy is trying to remember the blueprints that they’d gotten ahold of, trying to find their way to the cellblock, but he keeps thinking of that blinding light and Clarke standing there, all white and glorious.

.

They get caught. He and Clarke are thrown in a cell together without an sort of explanation, the door shut and locked behind them. The guard’s not doing anything to them now, but Bellamy knows that’s only temporary. Who knows what’s going to happen when the doors eventually open. And they will open.

It’s quiet for a moment, Clarke’s breathing the only sound, each inhale and exhale exaggerated.

Bellamy looks over at her. She looks exhausted, her hair limp and the circles around her eyes intense. She looks like someone has battered her over the head with a bat. He doesn’t want to think about what’s going to happen to her, doesn’t want to feel for her, doesn’t want to want to comfort her, to smooth her hair, to lay her head in his lap.

“Bellamy,” she says softly, reaching towards him.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps, and almost winces at the way she flinches away from him.

“What?” she asks, and it hurts how wounded she sounds, but there’s something like an angry beast in his chest and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

“You should have told me.”

“Told you what?” she asks, but he can tell she knows.

“My mother was killed by witches,” he says.

He thinks of the funeral, of the way Octavia had sounded on the phone, of the smile on the face of the witch on tv, blood coating her face while manic laughter sounded.

“We’re not all like that,” she says, like she can read his mind.

He laughs. It sounds stark in the empty room. It sounds crazy.

“Please tell me what it’s like, princess. Do you all save puppies and old ladies? Are you all angels sent from God, obviously, superior to us mere mortals?”

He’s breathing hard.

She looks like she’s in pain, face screwed up and eyes half closed. He wonders if magic takes it out of you, saps your energy, steals your soul.

“I thought you were on our side,” she says when she catches her breath, her voice raspy and barely audible

A moment later she says even more quietly, “I thought you knew.”

“I was in it to get my sister back,” he says. “Nothing else.”

He wants to revel in the way his statement contorts her face, but it just twists his insides into tighter knots.

“What if she was one of us?” Clarke asks, looking at him through pain filled eyes.

He hadn’t thought of it. He’d been so caught up in the righteousness of the situation, his sister stolen from him, taken without cause, that he hadn’t thought of it.

“She’s not,” he says.

“She might be,” Clarke says, and it almost sounds like she’s comforting him.

“I said she’s not,” he says.

Clarke looks taken aback by the harshness of his voice and there’s a part of him that wants to apologize, but he staves it off, locks it in a place that won’t affect him. He won’t let her affect him. He slumps down on the floor and tries to go to sleep. He might as well be rested for whatever the next day brings.

.

Two days pass and the door doesn’t open. He can tell that Clarke needs food and water. He needs it too, but he’s obviously stronger than her. She looks like she’s dying, hollows digging into her cheeks and eyes, all the color fading out of her. He tries not to feel bad for her, but she’s so pitiful, it’s hard not to.

“I’m not dying,” she says when she sees him watching her. He looks away, studying the walls, staring at the smooth white surface of them, no flaws.

“It sure looks like it,” he says.

“I’ll last longer than you,” she says, coughing so hard she has to stop talking for a minute. “The magic is tied to my life support. They’re trying to drain it out, but it will take more than this to kill me. I’m just tired, it took a lot of magic to take out those guards. It’ll come back.”

“Okay.”

“So, I’m not dying.”

“Fine.”

“Alright,” she says.

.

Time doesn’t seem to run the same in the cell, the lighting never changes. Sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he doesn’t.

“Do you think the others made it out?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says.

The silence presses on.

“Probably not,” he says.

He spares a glance at her and sees that she’s crying, tears streaming down her face. She raises her chin when she sees him watching her, stares back resolutely.

“They’re just kids,” she says.

“They’re not kids to the guard,” he says, leaning his head back against the wall, “they’re enemies.”

“Not all of them are witches,” she says, “some of them are just people who got caught up in it. Supporters and those who’d lost all of their family. I’ve killed them. I’ve killed them all.”

“This isn’t your fault,” he says.

“Whose fault is it then?” she asks. He's trying to equate this girl who bears the weight of the world on her shoulders with what he’s always thought of as witches, the woman on the tv with snarling teeth, the dark figure who had murdered his mother.

“You can blame me, if you want,” he says, “I pressed you into this attack.”

“Bellamy,” she says and there’s some kind of need in her voice that makes Bellamy’s stomach tighten.

She crawls towards him. He wants to move away with her, he doesn’t want to experience the effect of having Clarke close to him, but she looks so weak that he lets her scoot right next to him so that her arm brushes his. He shivers.

“When we get out,” she starts.

“If,” he corrects.

“When,” she says, moving her hand and turning his face towards her. She’s staring at him with desperate eyes. They’re all kinds of blue and green and beautiful. “You can’t run from this, Bellamy. I know that  we’re,” she starts again, “I know that I’m not everything you thought I was, but I need you. We all need you.”

He looks into her eyes, sees the hope and trust in them, feels the weight of that responsibility settling on him.

“Alright, princess,” he says, “Alright.”

.

On the fifth day, the door opens. Bellamy expects a legion of guards. He expects helmets and guns and torture devices. He doesn’t expect a head of shaggy brown hair and big brown eyes. He doesn’t expect Clarke to cry, “Finn!” and struggle to her feet and throw herself at the boy.

“Come on,” he says, “We don’t have a lot of time.”

Bellamy doesn’t like the casual way that Finn has an arm around Clarke. Logically, he knows that she probably needs it, she’s still unsteady on her feet, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

“Who’s this?” he says, gesturing with his head at Bellamy.

Clarke looks back at him.

“He’s with me,” she says.

.

Finn leads them through the hallways with extreme caution, stopping behind every corner, shuttling them into dark corners and timing everything with precision on his watch. Occasionally, he stops and murmurs something softly. Originally, Bellamy thinks the kid is insane, but he quickly realizes he’s conversing with someone through a headset.

“How’d you even meet this guy?” Bellamy asks Clarke as they’re hurrying down another endless hallway.

“Finn?” Clarke asks, face guarded, “He’s part of my mother’s resistance. He heads another branch of it.”

Seeing his shocked face she adds, “Bigger than you thought, huh?”

“You’ve been keeping me out of the loop, princess.”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you,” she says and then looking at him again, eyes intreating, “I can trust you, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, wondering if he’s telling the truth.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s wondering about a trade, information in exchange for Octavia. He’s wondering what he knows that they’d want, names and places and information. He’s wondering if Octavia is worth Clarke.

“Come on,” Finn says, turning back and putting his arm around Clarke’s waist again, helping her shuffle down the hall.

As an attack team, they’re not looking so hot.

.

Bellamy doesn’t have the blueprints memorized, but he realizes pretty swiftly that they’re not heading for the cell block.

“Stop,” he calls.

Finn looks around with worried eyes, checks his watch, listens to something in his earpiece.

“We’re going back for everyone else,” he says.

Finn laughs, more out of shock than anything.

“I had enough trouble getting you two out, you think I’m going to risk that on the slim chance we might be able to rescue someone else?”

“We’ve come this far,” Bellamy says, looking at Clarke, “we can’t leave them behind. We can’t leave Octavia behind.”

“Bellamy,” she says, in a voice that means defeat.

He’s never worked well with defeat.

“Give me your gun,” he says to Finn.

“Dude,” Finn says, “back off. I’m trying to save your life.”

“I don’t care what you do, I’m going to get my sister,” he says.

Clarke says his name like an admonishment, a warning. He doesn’t listen.

.

He makes it to the cell block with relatively little trouble. The hallway is sterile, white and blank like everything in the compound. It freaks Bellamy out, like he’s leaving prints behind.  Each cell has a window into the room, like a place where they’d keep mental patients or animals. Bellamy tries to imagine Clarke in a place like this and falls short. Whatever she is, she isn’t an animal.

Bellamy’s heart stops when he sees Octavia. He hadn’t realized how much he had been relying on her being there, on her still being alive. She doesn’t see him until he’s right outside her door, his hand pressed against the glance. 

“Octavia,” he says, voice filled with more longing than he’d care to admit.

When she looks up, he sees none of the love he had expected reflected in her eyes, just fear.

“Bellamy, run!” she screams, her voice a muffled echo through the door.

There is a blinding pain in the back of his head and then the world goes black.

.

He hears screaming and sirens going off, everything a muggy blur. His hearing fades in and out, flashes of pandemonium leaking through his ears.

“What’s going on?” someone yells.

“Security breach,” somebody else responds.

“What do we do with him?” the first voice asks.

“Just shoot him and get it over with.”

Bellamy doesn’t hear the cock of the gun or the whiz of the bullet, but he feels it enter his body in an explosion of pain, like every cell in his body is focused on the bullet in his chest. He feels like he’s dying. He probably is dying, he thinks hazily.

.

An eternity passes in an instant.

.

He feels hands on his body, his face, his hair, his side.

“You can’t die on me,” a voice whispers. It sounds suspiciously like Clarke.

He wants to reach out. He wants… But he finds he’s lost control of his limbs and consciousness slips from him soon after.

.

He wakes up in an unfamiliar room. There’s a pounding in his head, but when he looks down the skin of his chest is smooth and unblemished. He wonders for a moment if he’d imagined the whole thing, but he doesn’t think he could imagine that kind of pain.

“Bellamy,” he hears and then suddenly Octavia is in his arms.

He hugs her back, holding her too hard, but she doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Octavia murmurs, “It’s okay. I’m okay,” into his ear.

“I found you,” he says, releasing her enough that he can look into her face.

She smiles at him and nods.

“Yeah. You did.”

She looks thinner than she did before she left and her eyes are older. Bellamy can’t see any visible marks on her skin, but for some reason he thinks she hasn’t come out of this unscarred.

“Where’s Clarke?” he asks, the words coming out of his mouth before he can stop them.

Her face tightens, worry lines that he’s never seen before standing out out sharply.

“I’ll take you to her,” she says.

.

Finn is in the room, kneeling beside the bed, obscuring Bellamy’s view of it’s occupant. He stands when Bellamy enters, Clarke’s hand falling from his grasp.

She looks terrible. A hundred times worse than she had in the cell. She looks lifeless, she looks dead.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks.

Finn looks at him, there’s something appraising in his gaze, like he’s measuring how much Bellamy’s worth. It makes him uncomfortable.

“She used her life force to save you.”

“She’s dying?” Bellamy asks, the fear and horror in his voice betraying him. He wasn’t supposed to care this much.

“She used too much magic,” Finn says, reaching out and touching Clarke’s face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Bellamy’s surprised by how much he wants to slap the kid’s hand away. “She’s not supposed to do stuff like that.”

“Then why did she?” Bellamy asks, half to himself.

He can feel Finn’s gaze on him, but he doesn’t move his eyes from Clarke’s face, pale and listless, all because of him.

“I don’t know,” Finn says, but Bellamy thinks maybe he does and he hates himself a little bit for it.

.

Bellamy discovers pretty quickly that Finn has taken them to the rebellion’s headquarters.

“We call it the ark,” he tells Bellamy when he shows him around the first day.

“Like a big boat?” Bellamy asks.

“Like Noah’s ark,” he says, “We’re hoping at least some of the witches survive. I think it was as close to Jaha gets to a joke.”

“Is everyone here a witch?” he asks.

Finn raises his eyebrow and then shrugs. Bellamy guesses that Clarke’s saving him made him marginally more trustworthy in the boy’s eyes, but he doesn’t think they’re ever going to be friends.

“No,” he says, “Some are, but it’s really a hodgepodge of people here on the ark. You’ll find people from every walk of life.”

“And what about you?” Bellamy asks, “What walk of life are you from?”

Finn shrugs sheepishly, “My girlfriend introduced me to the whole thing and well, it kinda grew on me. I always was a sucker for saving people and witches, well, they need saving more than most.”

“Clarke got you involved then?” Bellamy asks.

“Aaah, no,” Finn says.

Finn must see the surprise on Bellamy’s face. He has the decency to look abashed.

“It’s complicated,” he says. Bellamy raises an eyebrow.

“You’ll meet Raven soon enough,” Finn says.

.

Raven turns out to be striking girl in a wheelchair, all sharp tongue and big eyes. Bellamy can’t quite mesh the idea of her and Finn together in his mind, but he lets it be. It’s none of his business.

“So, you’re the reason Clarke’s comatose, huh?” she says, by way of greeting, not quite meeting his eyes, messing with something on the table.

“Most of the time I go by Bellamy,” he says.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says, already wheeling away.

He thinks that she's a force to be reckoned with.

.

Days pass and Clarke still doesn’t wake up. People don’t tell Bellamy much. He tries to get in the way as much as possible, but he only succeeds in pissing Clarke’s mom off--she’s probably the most intimidating person he’s ever met and he’s faced an angry Clarke Griffin-- and getting banished to his room like a child. He spends a lot of time at Clarke’s bedside. He feels kind of silly sometimes, staring at her sleeping face. Sometimes Octavia comes, most of the time she doesn’t. He’s scared to ask her what had happened to her while she was in there. There’s a distance between them that Bellamy is desperate to cross, but he doesn’t know how to. He tries to imagine what Clarke would say if she were awake, but his mind draws a blank. He misses her, more than he thought was possible. It feels almost the same as when Octavia had been taken, as if something was always not quite right. He hadn’t thought anyone could touch him that much.

“Come on, princess,” he whispers, but the nickname rings false.

“Clarke,” he says instead, taking her hand. It feels limp in his own, lifeless.

“I need you, too,” he says to the empty air.

He’s terrified when he realizes how true it is.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally wrote 3k in one day. This never happens. This story is taking over my life. Un-betad. Apologies for any errors.


	3. Chapter 3

“What did they do to you, O?” he asks Octavia a week into their stay at the ark.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she responds, her stock answer these days.

She found out that Lincoln was on the attack team and she’s in mourning. He thinks maybe she feels towards Lincoln the same thing that he feels towards Clarke, this weird mix of guilt and longing. He doesn’t want to push her, but he misses her, misses their closeness. He tries to think of a happy time that they’d had together, but they were all before their mother died, before the video came out, before the witches, something like an eon ago.

“Octavia,” he says, grabbing her arm as she tries to leave. He wants to ask her if she has magic, if that was why they took her, but he finds that he doesn’t have the nerve 

She flinches away from him, wincing in pain.

“What is it?” he asks.

He turns her arm in his grasp, her sleeve has ridden up and he sees countless puncture marks on the skin of her arm, all around the veins. She shrugs his hand off, tugs the sleeve down.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

.

Octavia, with her position as rescued victim, proves far more valuable to the resistance movement than he does. She’s always behind locked doors, conferencing with leaders. Whenever he sees them, they’re all looking around with worried eyes, but they close the doors whenever he comes near. They don’t trust him--partially because he used to be in the guard and partially because he’s the reason that their princess is incapacitated. He doesn’t really blame them, he wouldn’t trust him either.

.

He ends up spending most of his spare time in Raven’s room. She’s in charge of keeping the ark running or something like that, it mainly involves tinkering with a lot of machinery and making sure everything keeps working with a bunch of old parts that don’t really fit together. It seems kind of like a metaphor. She doesn’t let him do much or even really talk to him, but sometimes she hands him a piece of metal and some tools and gives him a few terse instructions. He fucks it up half the time and she curses him, wheeling around him and fixing it, but at least he’s doing something.

.

He’s not in the room when Clarke wakes up, which is funny seeing as he spends so much time there. He and Octavia just walk into their room one day and she’s awake, weak and drained, but very much there. He feels his heart stop a little bit. In the time that she has been out, the weeks that had passed without her presence, he hadn’t known what to do with himself, he’d thought that it would all fall back into place once she woke up, but now that he sees her, he finds that he’s just as lost.

“Bellamy,” she says, offering him a smile and trying to push herself into a sitting position.

He’s at her side in an instant, halting her.

“Woah, there, princess. Slow down. No point in injuring yourself when you’ve just woken up.”

She must see his worried face, because she shakes her head.

“I’m fine, Bellamy,” she says, reaching out a hesitant hand and then retracting it, pulling it back into her side.

He thinks back to their time in the cell, how she’d flinched away from him, and feels so guilty it hurts. He sinks to the ground by her bed. He doesn’t know how many times he’s sat in this same position, but it feels unbelievable different now that she’s awake.

“You’re not allowed to die on me,” he says. He’d been hoping to sound light, but it comes out far more serious than he’d intended.

Clarke’s eyes soften and this time it’s him that reaches for her, clutching her hand. Her fingers tighten around his and he closes his eyes, overcome with some kind of emotion and that he doesn’t want to put a name to. She’s awake. She’s alright. It doesn’t quite seem real. He’s reminded of how he’d felt when he’d seen Octavia again, the turning in his chest, like his whole world is clicking back into place.

“I’m okay,” she says, echoing Octavia’s words from earlier, “I’m okay.”

.

“You love her, don’t you?” Octavia asks when they leave the room.

Bellamy starts, caught somewhere between denying it and wondering if he’d been that obvious.

“I just didn’t want her to die for me,” he says, but Octavia looks at him with knowing eyes.

“What?” he snaps.

“I just never thought I’d see it happen,” she says, offering him a smile, the first one he’s seen in weeks.

It seems like a day for miracles.

.

Barely a day passes before Clarke is asking for a rescue mission for the rest of the hundred.

“Absolutely not,” Abby says immediately.

“These are our people,” Clarke says.

She’s limping and still looks kind of like death, but she’s Clarke, so she’s up and trying to lead a movement on her own. He should have known she’d be able to get more to happen in half a day than he could in weeks.

“We can’t just leave them in there.”

“She’s right,” Bellamy says.

Clarke shoots him a grateful look and Abby glares at him, but it’s not like that’s anything new. Abby looks at Clarke for a long minute. Bellamy thinks she’s taking in the lackluster skin, and the dull hair, the stark angles at which her bones stick out.

“No,” she says, finally. “We can’t risk it. Not right now. We don’t have the manpower.”

“I would go,” Clarke starts.

“I said no,” Abby states sharply.

Clarke turns to him after she leaves, looking at him like they’re part of a team. It feels good to be on somebody’s side again.

.

Bellamy spends most of the time helping Clarke recover. She doesn’t like admitting she’s weak, but she has trouble standing and even short walks wind her.

“It’s okay not to be strong all the time, princess,” he says softly after one particularly rough session, when she’d fallen trying to walk to the bathroom. He’d walked in on her slumped on the floor, crying as she tried to crawl the rest of the way there.

“I can’t do anything, Bellamy,” she says, looking at him with wrecked eyes. “I feel so useless.”

“I know,” he says, “but you’re strong, Clarke. You’ll come back from this.”

He hopes that he’s right.

.

Privately, he thinks that this isn’t how he’d imagined magic at all. This all consuming thing that steals the life from you doesn’t align with his mental picture. He’d always imagined that it made you strong, he hadn’t thought that it could make you weak.

“We almost never use it,” Clarke tells him one day.

They’re taking a walk around the compound, the farthest they’ve ever made it. Clarke has to stop and take short breaks, she runs out of breath every couple of feet, but she’s the most stubborn person Bellamy’s ever met, so they keep going.

“Some people,” she says a few moments later, “aren’t even aware that they have magic. It’s more the potential for the thing than anything else.”

“Did you know?” he asks her, offering his arm to help her get up some steps. She ignores it.

“Yeah,” she says, “I come from a family of witches, though it usually skips a generation or so, so it’s not like I had a mentor, but I had books, journals and stuff.”

“So, your dad wasn’t…” he trails off.

“No,” she says. “He was trying to protect me, thought that it was better that they took him than me.”

It’s quite for a minute, the only sound that of Clarke’s labored breathing.

“That was brave of him,” Bellamy says eventually.

“It was,” Clarke agrees.

They fall into silence as Clarke struggles through the next couple of feet.

“Is it always like this when you do,” he gestures, “whatever it is you do?”

“No,” she says, “small things aren’t that bad, but attack magic magic takes a lot out of you, it would have to, to hurt that many people and healing, well, everything requires a balance I suppose.”

“Why’d you do it?” he asks, a question that’s been bothering him for months, “You knew what it would do to you if you did, so why did you?”

“You would have died,” she says simply.

“Well, you almost did die,” he says, loud enough that a couple of people look over.

Clarke stops to rest for a moment, sitting down on a crate resting in the hallway. She breathes in and out, in and out, until her breathing returns to normal. Bellamy feels kind of ridiculous standing over her, his heart beating rapid fire in his chest.

“We don’t use magic unless we have to,” she says, meeting his eye, like that’s an answer.

Maybe it is.

.

He comes into Clarke’s room one day and finds it’s already occupied. Clarke’s sitting up in bed, leaning back against the pillows. That’s a surprise in itself, she’s always protesting sitting down, standing still, most things really. She looks better than she has in weeks, the color returning to her cheeks, her hair regaining some of its shine, her eyes starting to shimmer. The other occupant of the bed, sitting on the edge, making Clarke smile, is an African American boy, handsome, with one hand on the surface of the bed and the other resting against Clarke’s leg. Bellamy is surprised by the sudden stab of jealousy he feels.

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, when she sees him standing in the doorway.

He offers her a tense smile and hers wavers in response. He needs to get it together.

“This is Wells Jaha,” she says, gesturing to the boy.

It’s only when Bellamy walks further into the room that he sees the tube sticking out of Clarke’s arm, red fluid, blood most likely, running through the tube and into the machine at the side of the bed, a new addition to the room. A similar tube sticks out of Wells’s arm.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

Clarke’s smile fades, Wells’s eyes tighten.

“Nothing,” she says, not quite meeting his eyes.

“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” he says, hands bunched into fists.

Clarke looks upset, but doesn’t say anything.

“I would leave it alone,” Wells says softly, patting Clarke’s hand.

“Right,” Bellamy says, “I’ll leave you to it then.”

.

Bellamy storms off to Raven’s room. He’s in a foul mood. He can tell that she notices, but she doesn’t ask him any questions until he breaks the third thing that she hands him.

“Hey,” she says, snatching it from his hands, “leave the equipment out of it. It’s not its fault you’re pissy today.”

“Who’s Wells Jaha?” he asks.

He doesn’t like how her face relaxes in understanding. He doesn’t like being so easy to read.

“He’s the head honcho's son,” she says, “He’s been leading a resistance group in Europe.”

“Why’d he come back?” Bellamy asks.

Raven looks at him a long time. Bellamy feels like he can almost see the gears turning in her head, weighing her options, deciding whether or not to trust him. Eventually, she sighs.

“He came back for Clarke,” she says.

“For Clarke what?” he asks. “Is this some kind of romance saga?”

“Witches blood has healing properties,” she says. “It’s not something we like to spread, but there’s certain chemicals in the blood stream that speed up the healing process.”

“Why didn’t they use it to help Clarke earlier?” he asks.

Raven looks uncomfortable.

“It’s not a thing that most people do,” she says, “It’s not pleasant and it weakens the witch. It’s basically taking some of your life and giving it to the another person. You have to really care to give somebody else your blood.”

Bellamy thinks of the puncture marks on Octavia’s arm, hundreds and hundreds of them.

“And nobody here cares like that about Clarke?”

“Look, Bellamy. It’s not like we don’t care about her, it’s that we wouldn’t do it for almost anyone. Clarke doing what she did for you was outside of the norm. Most of us just care about surviving, that’s hard enough on its own.”

“So, why’s Wells doing it?”

Raven shrugs, “They’ve been best friends since childbirth.”

“So, are they...” he trails off, he doesn’t really know how to end that question.

“Look, Blake,” she says, “If you want to know who Clarke is dating, ask her yourself.

“I’m not,” he starts.

“You are. So knock it off.”

She returns to the machinery, pulling out a few wires and then handing it back to him. Bellamy sighs and picks up the pair of pliers.

“It won’t affect Wells as much as the rest of us,” she says a while later, “He has more magic than most.”

“Really? I didn’t realize that witches-”

“Had classes?” she supplies. “We do. And the Jahas are one of the oldest. Their family has produced some of the most powerful witches in the history of magic.”

“Sounds intense. I’m guessing that’s why Jaha’s the leader of this whole thing then.”

“Something of that sort, yeah,” she says.

Bellamy finds his eyes drawn to Raven’s limp leg, the one that causes her to be in the wheelchair. He’d never asked if she was a witch or not.

“What about you?” he asks.

She follows the path of his eyes and scowls.

“We’re not sharing tragic backstories, Blake,” she says, “It is what is.”

.

Clarke comes to find him later in the day. She looks like she did when he first saw her all those months ago, bright and shining and like Clarke.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Sorry about before.”

“Raven told me about the blood,” he says, even though maybe he shouldn’t.

“I know. I just talked to her.”

“You didn’t want me to know.”

The regret is plain on her face.

“Bellamy,” she says.

“No, I get it. I’m the outsider. The guardsman.”

“We don’t tell anyone, Bellamy,” she says, “It’s just habit. We’re always afraid that people will exploit us. We can’t save everyone.”

“That’s what the government is doing though, right?” he asks, “Harvesting people’s blood?”

She looks at him with weary eyes.

“I saw Octavia’s arm,” he says, “When she came back. It was full of puncture holes.”

“We’re not sure,” she says, “They could just be running tests, but yes. We think it’s likely. And if they know, they won’t stop hunting witches, because if you think about it, this is the solution to all their problems."

He doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“We have to get them out, Bellamy,” she says eventually.

“I know,” he says. “We will.”

.

Bellamy runs into Wells on accident. He’s gathering food on his tray from the central caf, if you can even call what they serve food, when the boy gets into line behind him. From Raven’s description, Bellamy had expected the boy to look destroyed, but beside from a slight pallor to his skin and the dark circles beneath his eyes, he seems relatively unharmed. 

“Hey,” he says, offering Bellamy a small smile.

Bellamy nods in greeting, he’s never been one for pleasantries.

“I need to talk to you,” Wells says.

“So talk,” Bellamy says.

Wells looks around with worried eyes.

“Not here,” he says, pressing a piece of paper into Bellamy’s hand. He almost wants to laugh at the similarities. He guesses they really are best friends.

.

Bellamy meets Wells at the appointed time and place, because he decides, why not?

“Thanks for coming,” Wells says, when Bellamy arrives, standing up from where he’s been sitting.

“Talk,” Bellamy answers.

“I want to lead a rescue mission for the rest of the hundred,” Wells says.

“Why aren’t you coming to Clarke with this?” Bellamy asks, crossing his arms.

“I don’t want her to get hurt,” Wells says.

He and Clarke are just the same, he thinks, all serious earnestness and masochism.

“And why do you think that I’ll help you?”

Wells shoots him what probably is as close to an incredulous look as his face can manage.

“Fine,” Bellamy says, “What would you have me do?”

  



	4. Chapter 4

Clarke finds him two days later. He’s hiding out in Raven’s room, fiddling with a spare piece of scrap machinery, wishing he knew more about what all of it did, if any of it could help them. Raven looks up when Clarke storms in, rolls her eyes when she heads straight for Bellamy. 

“I know what you’re up to,” Clarke says immediately.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says.

“I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to think you could do it on your own,” she hisses under her breathe.

“You really need to enlighten me about what you’re referring to, princess,” he says, taking no small pleasure in the angry blush that spreads across her cheeks.

She takes a deep breath, glares at him.

“Do I need to give you some space?” Raven asks, eyebrow raised.

“No,” Bellamy answers at the same time that Clarke responds, “Yes.”

Raven meets Bellamy eyes and there’s a smirk there. “I’m going to go take my lunch break,” she says. “Don’t fuck anything up.”

Clarke waits approximately three seconds after Raven’s exited the room before tearing into him.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that you almost died because of me and I owed you.”

That strikes Clarke speechless, her eyes wide, her mouth softening.

“That’s not your place,” she says, but her voice has lost its edge and Bellamy think it probably sounds more affectionate than she intends.

He just shrugs. “I didn’t say it was.”

She’s stares at him for a long beat, something calculating in her eyes. He wonders, not for the first time, what she sees when she looks at him.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asks finally, a small grin emerging on her lips.

.

They leave Wells out of it, because if there is anyone who should not be caught by the government it’s him-- the guard could explode the world with all the magic running in that boy’s veins. Bellamy wonders what the hell the boy could have been thinking, planning to break into a government facility with no backup, but he thinks of the curve of Clarke’s smile and the sound of her laugh and the depth to her goodness and he thinks maybe he sort of understands.

.

Bellamy thinks that they’re probably stupid to be trying this again. It didn’t go well last time and they had far more going for them back in. They make it into the compound, which is probably more a stroke of luck than a testament to their breaking and entering prowess.

The halls are eerily empty.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Bellamy says softly.

Clarke makes a move to walk forward, but Bellamy holds her back, pressing her against the wall.

He hears the sound of guards around the corner, the quiet rush of their footsteps on the metal floors. He can feel Clarke’s breathe against his neck, the press of her body against his. He tries to stop himself from noticing.

“Do you think they’re gone?” she whispers, the words stirring his hair.

He shivers.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice husky.

He needs some distance.

“Let’s go.”

.

They’re not expecting the guards waiting around the corner, maybe they should be, but they’re not. Clarke’s gun is up at the same time as Bellamy and they’re shooting wild, but not before the guards let off a round of their own. Bellamy ducks behind the wall, breathes deep, emerges gun blazing.

“Not too bad, huh princess?” he asks, when the guards are all dispatched, a bloody mess on the floor. He tries not to think about that too much.

He turns toward Clarke and finds her leaning against the wall, her head thrown back, eyes screwed shut in pain, blood blossoming across her shirt.

He’s by her side in an instant.

“Fuck, Clarke,” he says, pressing a hand to her stomach, trying to stem the flow of blood.

There’s panic in her eyes, but she’s stubborn and she’s strong, so she pushes him away.

“We have to go,” she says, trying to struggle to her feet. “We have to run.”

She makes it three steps before he’s carrying her. She’s lighter than he would have imagined and she fits better than he could have hoped in the curve of his arms and he can feel the beat of her heart against his own, still sounding, and he doesn’t know what he would do if she died. She can’t die.

“Bellamy,” she says, and there’s a desperation to her tone, “You need to leave me. You can’t get out carrying me.”

He doesn’t even bother answering her.

“Bellamy,” she says. “We don’t both have to die.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he snaps. “So stop asking.”

.

It feels like deja vu when they get caught again.

.

“Wells will be mad,” she says when the door closes behind them and she slumps down against the wall. “That we tricked him. He’ll blame himself for my death.”

“You’re not going to die,” he says, but that’s a lie and they both know it.

“Bellamy, she says, looking at him with soft eyes. “I-”

“You don’t have to say it, princess,” he says. “I’m not one for dying confessions.”

She falls silent. He guesses she isn’t really either.

.

It’s probably the worst night of his life, worse than the nights spent listening to his father scream and his mother whimper, worse than the night after his mother’s funeral, listening to Octavia cry through the door, worse even than the sleepless nights waiting for Octavia to come home, knowing that she wouldn’t.  He watches Clarke die, the color leaving her face, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her life draining out in front of his eyes. She has her hands wrapped around the bullet wound, but she can’t get enough pressure and blood leaks through her fingers, the red staining her hands, her clothes, the white walls

“Here,” he says gruffly, scooting towards her and pulling her into his lap, placing his arms around her, pressing the wound with his own hands. She groans, buries her head into the skin of his shoulder. It’s not how he’d imagined holding her, this sad mockery of an embrace.

“Sorry,” he says, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says, leaning her head back, her hair tickling his check.

All of Bellamy aches.

 _I’m not a doctor_ , he thinks, _and I’m not a witch. I’m just something like a boy who is in love with a dying girl._

It’s almost like a tragedy.

.

The silence hangs over the room, heavy, oppressive, terrifying. His body feels like it’s on hyper alert, every cell in his body on edge. The rasp of Clarke trying to get air to her lungs, her stifled groans of pain, the rapid beat of Bellamy’s heart against Clarke’s back sound deafening to his ears.

Please live, he prays.

Please live.

Please live.

He’s never really believed in God, but he needs this miracle and if there’s magic in this world, why does Clarke have to die?

.

I love you, he thinks about saying into the silence, but he doesn’t know how to make his lips form the words.

_I love you like I never thought that I would love anyone that’s not family and you can’t die on me, goddamnit princess. We’re a team and I need you._

The silence hurts.

.

“Bellamy,” she whispers.

“I’m here,” he says.

She adjusts against him with a groan. The blood is slick between them, pooling between their bodies. She’s lost too much, he thinks. He tightens his grip on her and never wants to let go.

“Tell me a story,” she says.

“What?” he asks.

“I don’t think I can stay awake much longer and I just-”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“There was once a little boy,” he says.

“Is this you?” Clarke asks.

“I believe you asked me to tell a story,” he says.

He can almost feel her smile.

“There was once was a little boy,” he begins again. “He was an only child for a long time, but then one day a baby was born and he named her Octavia.”

“Your mother didn’t name her?” Clarke asks him.

“I never said this was about me,” Bellamy says.

“Okay,” she says, moving her hand to cover his where it’s pressing the wound in her stomach.

Their fingers are slick with her blood, but her hand still fits perfectly in the slots of his fingers. His breath hitches in his throat.

He coughs, the movement causing her hair to flutter.

“Octavia grew up trapped, like the walls were closing in around her. And she had her brother, but it never felt like it was enough for her. She was always wanting to be bigger, do bigger things, be somebody. But her mother wanted her to be safe, so she didn’t let her leave the house or do what she wanted….”

His voice trails off, he doesn’t really know where he was going with this story anyway.

“Bellamy?” Clarke prompts.

“I think Octavia may have killed our mother,” he says finally.

It sounds weird out in the open, a thought that he had barely allowed himself to have. He’s not even sure why he said it aloud. It just feels like a time for truth telling.

Clarke’s doesn’t say anything, but he can tell that she’s listening.

“Not on purpose, but a lot of things just never added up. It didn’t really make sense how she found the body. Where had she been? And why would have a witch come after her? It didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t believe that Octavia was a witch.”

“It happens sometimes,” Clarke says softly after a moment, her voice weak, raspy, not Clarke’s voice. “The magic just comes out of you, generally it’s for emotional reasons and you can’t control it. It might have happened that way for Octavia.”

“Yeah, he says. “That might be it.”

“It’s not her fault,” Clarke says. “We can’t help how we’re born.”

“I know,” he says and they fall into the silence again.

“I wanted a happy story,” she says eventually.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t have that many of those.”

“What’s been happy in your life?” she asks.

She’s fading, Bellamy can tell. He feels his heart breaking with each pump of her bleeding heart, blood leaking from between their interlocked fingers.

“I met you,” he says, words slipping out without his permission.

Maybe he is one for dying confessions after all.

She doesn’t respond for a long moment, the silence stretches on, her breath coming in broken gasps. 

“Clarke?” he asks.

Her heartbeat is a sluggish beat against his hand, each one slower than the last

“Clarke,” he repeats, pulling her closer against him, running a bloody hand through her hair.

“Clarke,” he says again, but she doesn't answer, can't answer.

Clarke. Clarke. Clarke.

Blood stops leaking from her stomach. His breath freezes in his throat.

“You’re not dead,” he says, but that’s a lie and there's only him to know it.

Clarke’s blood is sticky on his hands, his clothes, his face, his hair. He’s coated in her.

“Fuck,” he says, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

He wants to stand up. He wants to get out of here. He wants to not be holding the body of this girl who is-was-God he wants Clarke to still be alive.

He’s crying now. He’s not a crier and the feeling is foreign to his body. He doesn’t like it. Screams instead. Clutches Clarke’s body and screams.

Clarke, he thinks, Clarke. He doesn’t have anything within him anymore besides her name.

It hurts. It hurts. He feels an ache in his chest, like an explosion, like he’s exploding, inward and outward, like all of him is leaking out, like he's dying alongside her.

.

It’s dim in the room when he wakes up and it takes him a moment to realize that he’s not in the cell anymore, but the hospital in the ark.

He sits up in a rush, blood rushing to his head, the world spinning. He groans. He feels like his whole body has been stomped on, his brain pounding, his heart sluggish.

A hand stops him before he’s fully sitting up, pushing him back onto the bed.

He looks over and sees Wells sitting at his bedside, a tube running from him into Bellamy’s arm.

“What the hell is going on?” Bellamy asks him.

“Bellamy,” he hears from the doorway and he looks up and Clarke is standing there.

“Clarke,” he says, a strangled attempt at her name.

“You were- you were,” he starts and then she’s running forward and she’s in his arms.

He clutches her tightly, presses kisses against the side of her face. He feels the tube rip from his arm, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

“You’re alive,” he breathes into her skin.

She pulls back, places her hands on either side of his face. Her eyes are bright and shining and she’s here, she’s here, she’s here. His brain can’t quite comprehend it.

“I watched you die,” he says.

“I know,” she says, pressing her forehead to his.

He squeezes his eyes shut, holds the back of her head, feels the silky strands of hair, tries not to remember how they felt coated with blood.

“How are you here?” he breathes.

“You saved me,” she answers.

  



End file.
